


Sentiment

by Kastaka



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happens, the fire suppression system wakes her. But nothing is ever going to be the same again. Post Iron Man 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentiment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unsettled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/gifts).



"So," said Pepper, "I'm glad you could make it."

"It's been crazier for you, huh?" replied Maria. "All we had to do is explain what was more urgent than rescuing the President of the United States, not actually recover in hospital from doing so…"

"Well," replied Pepper, looking slightly into the middle distance, "I'm not sure I'd use the word 'recover', exactly."

"Something you wouldn't tell the shareholders," Maria smiled.

"Isn't that the point of having lunch together?" asked Pepper, coming back to herself a little. "To be honest, I'm surprised that I haven't had a visit from the Big Eyepatch yet. Or is he going to show up with dessert?"

"We've been keeping him chained to a hot video-conferencing room," Maria replied. "Or rather, the Council have. Not that I was going to let him talk to you first."

"Are we having the superhero talk, then?" asked Pepper, smiling slightly.

"What part of the superhero talk do you think you need?" Maria asked her in return. "I mean, I don't think you need the bit about not being the biggest fish in the pond, or the bit where we tell you that unfortunately you can't rule the world now because some people have got there first. Although, if you wanted to rule the world, I don't think you'd start with running and jumping and setting things on fire…"

Pepper chuckled appreciatively. "Yes, I rather think the multi-billion dollar corporation is more suited to that kind of thing." There's a pause; she looks a little awkward. "That's not the full content though, is it?"

"Well, we could try the bit where we pretend that we can have any control over you whatsoever," Maria offered, "but to be honest, were you going to do anything that we would actually break out the big guns for? And, let's just say it, I'm not convinced either you or your gentleman will stand for any ham-fisted attempts to recruit you into some kind of formal organisational position other than the very useful one you're already occupying."

"So that's it?" Pepper asked. "Well, no, if we're saying things, it clearly isn't, is it? If you actually need me…"

"...then your glamorous assistant Natalie might drop by and make a few suggestions, it's true," admitted Maria. "But right now, unless you were planning to take up mysteriously surviving in vacuum or deep ocean environments too, there really isn't much we haven't got covered - that we know about."

"Which is why I'm more valuable in place," surmises Pepper. "Even though it's got nothing to do with the whole… glowing red and setting things on fire... business."

"Tracking down the Tesseract didn't have anything to do with turning green and punching aliens through tower blocks, either," Maria reminded her.

\-----

The first time it happens, the fire suppression system wakes her.

Half-asleep, Tony is plastered against the wall on the side of the room with the door, instantly reacting to danger in the way that Pepper knew would immensely aggravate him later.

"Am I mean to be saying," he says, blearily, "that it's all okay, honey? Or, I mean, at least that you were, I don't know, just dreaming? I seem to remember, something about, you used to…"

She is not burning. The bed is not on fire. The world has not been consumed in one final flash of light. She is lying, rather damp, on the soaked remains of the bedclothes. Her hands dig into them at her sides as she takes a deep breath and attempts to reorient herself.

"I'm fine," she lets out, somewhat too fast to be convincing. "I'll be fine," she amends. "Just… oh god, I'm sorry."

"I think this is the bit where," and he takes in a somewhat ragged breath, because he's beginning to wake up enough to realise what just happened, "I, uh, reassure you, that it's not your fault?"

She closes her eyes. Bad move. The fire is still playing behind them. She opens them again and gazes wretchedly at the ceiling. This is not a thing that she wanted to happen. This is not a thing she had planned for.

"Jarvis," she hears him call, "cut it out with the fountain, will you?"

The bedroom stops getting damper, but the damage is already done.

"Pepper," he says, rather more weakly than she thinks he intends. "Pepper, say something."

"This is not what I wanted to be doing with my first night out of hospital," she replies.

She can hear that he's trying to get his breathing back under control. It seems to be working, so she just lies there and looks blankly upwards, feeling the undercurrents of her mind attempting to fit the pieces of her life back together around this new piece of information.

A few moments later, she says, "You're about to ask if there's anything you can do. You're going to be really clumsy about it and get yourself worked up again. I'd really rather just lie here and process."

"Can I at least get you a towel?" he asks.

The sheer incongruity of the mundane concerns of life against the backdrop of her fears finally propels her into motion; she sits up, smiles ruefully, hair dripping on the floor. "If it'll make you feel better," she replies.

He heads into the en-suite, emerges with a couple of ludicrously oversized bath sheets, drapes one around her shoulders before folding up the other and sitting on it, next to her, on the sodden bed. Puts his arm around her, like she hasn't just overheated enough to set off the fire safeties and hence threatened to give him some pretty serious burns.

"Just so you know," she says, "it's totally okay for you to find some obscure technological solution to this problem."

"I'd kind of expected to be happier about hearing that," he replies, in a tone that implies he is confused with himself.

"It is also okay to be unhappy about it," she says. "I'm really quite unhappy about it right now."

For a moment, she lets herself consider crying; and then she is crying, and she doesn't remember making the decision to do so.

\----

"We had another couple of close calls," explained Pepper, "but once we knew what to look for, I just wear some bracelets overnight and they wake me up if they find my sleep pattern heading somewhere dangerous."

"And the medical division is…?" began Maria, leaving the question open.

"Now, now," replied Pepper, "I don't fish for SHIELD secrets at lunch, and…"

"It's not for SHIELD," replied Maria, suddenly rather serious. "Or… at least, not just for SHIELD."

Pepper looked up at the other woman, appraisingly. "You've been… I'd ask if you understood that we still can't guarantee you don't blow up in the first few hours, but of course you do. It's not like you don't take bigger risks..."

"Not any more, if they can help it," Maria corrected her. "But yes. I suppose I'm - I mean, we've had other promising avenues before. But all of them have been really quite significantly out of my safety range - especially given the side-effects."

"So you're examining me?" asked Pepper, and her tone was still bright and conversational but there was the potential for an edge behind it. "For, as you say, potential side-effects?"

"Partially," admitted Maria. "I suppose - like you - I don't really need it, nowadays. But I see the threat picture, and there are so many things that, well, are no respecter of conventional security measures, let's put it that way."

"You do realise we're trying to tune it for already-terminal cases first, yes?" Pepper asked her. "You know - trauma victims, severe burn patients, anyone with clear and straightforward damage that don't have the best survival chances at the moment. We're not convinced it will even work on anything subtle, but plenty of people die of unsubtle, if you see what I mean."

Maria took a carefully-timed bite of food to avoid having to answer that immediately. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"What you're trying to say," replied Pepper, with that extra note of brightness that clearly substituted for gritted teeth, "is that I can't tell you if it's worth it, because everything which is troublesome for me, you have, of course, already resolved."

"If by that," replied Maria, with a calm frankness which served a similar purpose in her, "you mean that I have killed a lot of people, often quite personally, then yes, I suppose I am saying that."

Pepper took a sip of her tea. She did not, she was fairly sure, want to escalate this. "I just wanted everything to be… normal," she said, looking down at the table. "I know nothing ever is, and maybe nothing ever was, and it certainly won't be again unless I bury my head in the sand a lot more than I can. But," she looks up and offers a wry smile, "it doesn't stop me wanting it."

"Now that," replied Maria, "is a sentiment I can get behind."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Suppression Systems (the Boardroom Boogaloo remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175613) by [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter)




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